Health IT Stakeholders Consider Virtual Clipboard for Patient Data

Dec 11, 2014, 10:44 AM

On Monday, about 40 representatives from the health care industry and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT discussed the possibility of creating a virtual clipboard to automate the patient intake process, Modern Healthcare reports.

The meeting was hosted by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange and the Sullivan Institute for Healthcare Innovation to discuss how stakeholders could "create an industry blueprint around how to automate the patient intake process."

Meeting attendants included:

Payers;

Providers;

Health IT business associations; and

Health IT vendors.

In addition to ONC, organizations represented at the meeting included:

Aetna;

Anthem;

The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association;

Hunch Analytics;

Humana;

Kaiser Permanente;

The Medical Group Management Association; and

UnitedHealthcare.

Details of Discussion

During the discussion, WEDI President and CEO Devin Jopp said, "The goal is to make the first experience (going) into your [general provider], specialist or hospital as simple as buying a cup of coffee." He noted that the not-for-profit organizations "created four different workgroups that will meet between January and February to work out details" of pilot projects.

The first phase of the projects will enable patients to use mobile applications to carry their demographic and insurance data in formats that can be used by providers.

Jopp said that by the end of next year, workgroup participants should have studied phase two of the projects, which will allow individuals to carry and exchange computable "essential health information," such as medications and allergy lists and lab test results.